Just returned from the opening-welcome and first panel of the Yale Law School Colloquim examining Prison Conditions. Somehow the biblical phrase of setting the captives free continues to ring in the my ears and soul. Listen to the video excerpts where at least among those gathered the predominant opinion is that prisons are a bad thing. We can no longer ship folks to Australia. Prison colonies are no longer in vogue. However debtor's prison still seem to rule the roost , at least in America. You have heard the statistics time and time again. America imprisons more of its citizen's per capita so to speak than any other nation. Coincidentally, randomly or intentionally folks that are black and brown are over represented. As I was in discussion with Barbara Fair, well known, prison abolitionist, this macabre state of lunacy,repels the imagination and disembowels the soul.
http://www.law.yale.edu/intellectuallife/limancolloquium2010.htm
The 13th Annual Liman Colloquium, “Imprisoned,” is being held at Yale Law School, 127 March 4–5. This Colloquium will explore the issues raised by the incarceration of more than two million people in the United States.
The first panel will considered the hardening of prison culture, the rising numbers of supermax facilities, and the increasing use of segregation. Speakers included James Austin (JFA Institute); Sharon Dolovich (UCLA School of Law; Georgetown University Law Center); David Fathi (ACLU National Prison Project); Craig Haney (UC Santa Cruz); and Judith Resnik (Yale Law School). Following this panel were remarks from Dora Schriro, the new commissioner of the New York City Department of Correction and the former director of the Office of Detention Policy and Planning for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Also speaking were be Ashbel T. Wall, the director of the Department of Corrections in Rhode Island. The evening speakers on Thursday focused on the contributions of Clinical Professor Brett Dignam, who has taught the Prison Legal Services clinic at Yale since the early 1990s.
After a while one has to ask the question, how can we apply rational logic to an illogical model. It reminds me of the folks debated whether the earth is flat, while ships are sailing around the globe. When will we emerge from this current dark age of dungeons and dragons , supermax prisons and death sentences? Is it not ironic that those that have paid the most to this society, a few hundred years of free labor are still paying their debt to an oppressive society. Polemics you say, research and verify the graph displayed by one of the speakers that showed that although crime has risen moderately since the reign of Reagan to the present, incarceration has risen 4 -5 times more. The struggle continues.
PART 2 Video Excerpts:
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